Marx, Darwin and the Scientific Ideology
by John Thornton Bannerman
WHEN IN 1867 Karl Marx had completed the first volume of his major work, Das Kapital, he offered to dedicate it to the great biologist Charles Darwin. Darwin cautiously declined the honour, pleading his "ignorance of economics."
No less ironic were the words spoken sixteen years later at Marx's graveside by his amanuensis and financial backer, Friedrich Engels. "Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature," eulogised Engels, "so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history." Ironic, for the social consequences of the law of evolution in organic nature Darwin discovered sounded the death-knell of Marx's pretended "law of evolution in human history."
The invocation of Darwin's name by Marx and Engels cannot have reflected any grasp on their part of the social implications of his discoveries...implications which are in fact utterly fatal to the Marxist worldview. Instead, Marx and Engels trotted out the name of Darwin as part of their ambition to present as "new" and "scientific" a body of belief which actually is very old and wholly unscientific.
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